In recent years, the distribution of products or goods has become voluminous. In such a situation, a person who desires to purchase a product tends to forget which product he or she has ordered, or tends to incorrectly remember or record the number thereof. Further, a product supplier must correctly and quickly process orders received from purchasers. Such a product purchase system is used in various fields of transactions, specifically, in a cooperative buying organization, a direct delivery system for farm products, and various mail order systems.
A product distribution system will now be described by using as an example the current cooperative that can reduce unit prices of individual products through cooperative buying. The cooperative buying as practiced by the current cooperatives has become popular, which provides consumers with products through cooperative stocking or entrusted production in response to consumer's demands for special products, such as organic vegetables, products in which the density of agricultural chemicals is low, high quality products or uniquely specified products.
FIG. 1 shows a typical cooperative buying system. This cooperative buying system collects orders from members who belong to particular groups, or general members who do not belong to any group, for each periodical deadline date established for ordering products and collecting money, collectively requests production on order and delivery, and collectively delivers the products to the contracting groups and collects money therefrom. This cooperative buying system will now be described in detail.    (1) A cooperative buying organization such as a cooperative association (hereinafter referred to as a shop) registers groups of multiple members and general members such as personal contractors (hereinafter referred to as users), and periodically distributes, to these users, product catalogs and order sheets which may be printed materials listing the products. A group leader is appointed for each group, who distributes the order sheets and products, and collects money. The product catalogs and the order sheets are periodically updated, and seasonal products for special order may be added for a special season such as the New Year.    (2) A user who desires to order a product refers to a related product catalog, and enters the quantity of each product that is ordered on the order sheet on which a form corresponding to the product catalog is printed. In case of a group, the leader of the group collects requests from the group members, and prepares a single consolidated order sheet. Currently, this order sheet is typically an OCR form.    (3) After a deadline date that was previously set for the completion of orders, the shop collects the orders from the users, and processes the orders using a proprietary order reception system. Further, depending on the products ordered, the shop entrusts the production of the products to manufacturers, or purchases the products from other wholesalers or venders, or supplies the products from its local stock. After a predetermined period has elapsed following the deadline date, the shop delivers or distributes the products to the respective registered users, i.e., groups and/or general members. The delivery may be done once a week or once every two weeks.    (4) After the products have been delivered, a group leader distributes the products among the members of that group, and collects money to pay for them. Subsequently, the leader pays the collected money to the shop, which then pays to the respective product suppliers from which the shop purchased the products, thus completing the transactions.
The following problems are encountered in the existing product purchase system described above.
<Problems at a User Site>
    (1) Collecting orders from group members is a troublesome work. For example, when a group purchases products, the load imposed on a leader is excessive because the leader has to collect and record a number of orders, and to accept changes to the orders and additions of new orders, which are laborious and time-consuming.    (2) When a record of orders is maintained and a group purchases products based on this record, a group leader has to aggregate payments for each member and collect money. This is a troublesome work and requires much labor and time.    (3) When products are ordered, items listed on an order form are entered manually regardless of whether the products are being purchased by a group or an individual. Thus, errors tend to occur in the entered prices of the products ordered by a user, and much labor and time are required of the user. Further, if errors occur in the calculation of payments, much labor should be involved in the product distribution and collection of money.    (4) In case of a group, each group member has to keep his/her own order record by transcription or copying from the original record. In some cases, members may lose the records, or may not record orders at all. Further, when a record is transcribed to a different sheet of paper, an error in writing may occur, resulting in some confusion.    (5) In addition, a longer period of time may be required from ordering the products until actually delivering the products due to the above erroneous conditions, so that the product distribution cannot be performed smoothly. Further, since orders are continuously and periodically issued, for example, every two weeks, double ordering and/or missing orders may occur inadvertently at the user side unless the order record is maintained.<Problems at Shop and Product Supplier Sites>
On the other hand, the following problems are observed at the shop and product supplier sites.    (1) Labor, time and cost are required each time product catalogs and order sheets are prepared and printed.    (2) Since the creation and management of such order sheets lead to an extended time required to supply products to users, some users may no longer have interest in the products at the time they are actually delivered and may, therefore, be reluctant to use such a system, which would hinder further growth of the cooperative buying system.    (3) While an OCR can be used for aggregating the order sheets, it requires time and hands to manage deadlines and to enter the aggregated data into the order receiving and placing system. Therefore, such a system may not be efficient.    (4) A lead time of several weeks is generally required from ordering till delivering since manufacturing of products is entrusted or the products are stocked after an order is received, which would not satisfy consumer's requirements, as compared with other product distribution systems, and prevent the expansion of the cooperative buying system.    (5) Furthermore, particulars of a delivery schedule must be issued and distributed to each user for confirmation of an order, and particulars of direct debit must also be issued and distributed to each user for accountancy, which would require extra labor and time.    (6) Trouble may also be caused by an aggregate error due to user's misinput on an OCR form or a failure in the OCR.    (7) In the transactions with users, exception processes for handling order sheets which have not been received before a deadline date may occur so that complicated deadline management is required. FIG. 2 illustrates the individual steps in the operational flow of the conventional product purchase system and method. As described above, there are several problems in the conventional product purchase systems, e.g., product purchasing through a cooperative, and there is a strong demand for a smoothly operating product distribution system.